ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the black folks and the struggle in philosophy. A new generation of young black philosophers has been pressing the case for the articulation and recognition of 'black philosophy' and in doing so have sparked heated debates. Philosophy itself, both as a notion and as various forms of praxis, remains seriously problematic today, again for historical reasons. Many very significant insights into the history of black thinkers are to be had in the work by Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. The insights of Cruse make clear our historically conditioned vocation, which is fixed for us even more specifically by Vincent Harding. As beneficiaries of the high levels of cultural development in the West, in general, the US in particular, based as it is in large part on the oppression and dehumanization of others, our responsibilities to us and to these peoples is clear and immense.
